4 Trends in Content Marketing to Watch

The idea behind content marketing is to engage existing customers and generate new business leads by offering high-quality, useful advice and information that isn’t overtly sales-focused. Small businesses can go about this by providing everything from grocery flyers and Rotary Club speeches to blog posts and how-to videos. And, of course, it pays to stay on top of the latest developments.

Content curation: ­”Content curation” refers to the process of finding and sharing industry-related information with others via social media, your company’s website or email newsletter, or another vehicle. Eighty percent of marketers say they now incorporate content curation into their overall content-marketing strategy, according to a B2B survey by HiveFire. (That’s up from about 50 percent last year.)

Video production: Video is growing as a content platform for even the smallest of businesses. According to the Content Marketing Benchmarks report, 56 percent of marketers today distribute video content on YouTube. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to invest in expensive equipment to create compelling videos. For example, the massively popular Dollar Shave Club ad was shot with a Canon EOS 5D camera and a Steadicam for $4,500. Other successful business owners, such as Laura Roeder, founder of social-media training firm LKR, simply use a computer webcam to film videos.